On August 18th, 2020, the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, Donald Trump declared Susan B. Anthony was officially pardoned for her crime of illegally voting. Susan B. Anthony is a woman’s rights icon and lesser-known as an avid abolitionist. On August 17th, Donald Trump announced that the next day he would pardon someone, “very, very important” the next day.
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was mostly focused on fighting as an abolitionist. However, she also made a very bold move that year: she went to the voting booth to try her hand at illegally voting.
She was indicted and then tried and convicted and fined $100, as well as forced to cover the court costs. What started as a simple act of civil disobedience ended as, according to the New Yorker, “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded.” That is a very extreme statement, and could definitely be called into question, but nonetheless puts the importance of this movement into perspective. What does this have to do with the pro-life movement, though?
There are many aspects of Susan B. Anthony’s life and beliefs that are shared by the pro-life community. One important one is the protection of children. In fighting for women’s rights, Anthony was fighting in part for the mother to have a right to keep her children.
In Anthony’s time, when a woman married, everything she owned belonged to her husband: this included the woman’s children. This accounted for many, many situations of women staying in very abusive situations because if the wife was to leave, she wouldn’t have custody of the children: the custody of the children always went to the father! Since most mothers are too attached to their children, many mothers would stay in relationships where the husband was abusive to her and possibly even to the children as well.
Another reason Susan B. Anthony is a pro-life icon and not just a pro-woman icon is because Anthony was, in fact, pro-life! She says about unborn children, “Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”
Many people would be surprised that such an avid feminist was pro-life, however, this was not at all uncommon: most of the leading early feminists were also extremely pro-life! This is further explained in An Insider’s Look at the Lies Behind Modern Feminism and the Sexual Revolution, where the truths about the founding and the corruption of the Modern Feminist Movement are explained in more detail.
All in all, Susan B. Anthony was pro-woman, pro-life, and pro-suffrage, and Donald Trump did right by all women to pardon her last Tuesday. He told Fox News reporters that day, “She was never pardoned. Did you know that? She was never pardoned…What took so long?” And later he explained, “She was guilty for voting,” he said, “and we’re going to be signing a full and complete pardon.”
This is just one more way President Trump is showing his support for women and children and the Feminist Movement as it should be: the demanding of equality for women- both born and unborn.